1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to computer networks and to telephony. More particularly, this invention is directed to methods and systems for more efficient and effective communication and processing of communications and other electronic data within a school's call management and contact center.
2. Description of the Related Art
School safety is an issue that concerns all of us. Our children's well being and knowing that they are being taught in a safe and protective environment is important. Now more than ever, we are constantly reminded that schools throughout the country are plagued with the threats of violence, drugs, theft, vandalism, and other crimes. This epidemic is not limited to any particular geographic or socioeconomic area—it surrounds us all.
For the most part, schools have rarely understood or had time or resources to consider their security plans from a systems perspective (e.g., looking at the big picture). See U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, The Appropriate and Effective Use of Security Technologies in U.S. Schools—A Guide for Schools and Law Enforcement Agencies, September 1999, NCJ 178265, (810 Seventh Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20531, www.ncjrs.org/school/state.html). For each school, the security staff must define what shall be protected (e.g., people, assets, etc.), against whom shall it protect (e.g., the security risks, threats, etc.), and the constraints of that protection (e.g., facilities, building layout, funding/costs, politics, etc.). Using these considerations, the security staff can develop an effective and efficient security strategy. This strategy will likely include combinations of technologies, personnel, and procedures that do the best job of solving the problems within its constraints. Paramount to each school's solution is the ability to access and communicate school safety and security information.
Communications, including the ability to disseminate safety and security information, is vital to ensuring school safety and security. For example, if there is a bomb threat to the school, then the school must be able to communicate this threat to the students, teachers, and other occupants of the facilities, local law enforcement personnel, and other emergency response personnel. Thus, communicating threats or other safety information to appropriate personnel is vital to responding to and controlling safety and security risks.
Typically, each school has a call management and contact center (herein after referred to as a “call center”) that is responsible for managing communications (including incoming, internal, and outgoing communications) and for disseminating communications to staff, students, and other individuals visiting the campus. These call centers are staffed with personnel, interactive voice response recordings, and/or information systems to process communications (e.g., a call from a parent to talk with a teacher, a call from a supplier for an address and/or directions to the campus, etc.). Each week, hundreds, if not more, of incoming communications (e.g., calls, emails, etc.) and associated data (e.g., identification of the incoming calling number and/or a name of the calling party) are received, accessed, and/or managed by the call center. Frequently, a person answering (hereinafter referred to as the “agent”) the phone (or an automated call forwarding system) may respond to the call and/or forward/transfer the call and/or associated data to an extension of a staff member who can respond to the caller. The extension is typically associated with a physical location of a phone, such as a phone in the staff member's office or a particular location in the school. Oftentimes, the staff member is unavailable to receive the incoming call and/or associated data because the staff member is away from the phone or because the phone cannot display or otherwise provide the associated data. For example, if the staff member is a security guard, then the guard may be located at numerous locations throughout the day, such as common areas including the main entrance during the beginning and end of the school day, the cafeteria during lunch time, recreational areas, auditoriums, classrooms, and offices. Thus, the security guard travels to multiple locations at different times throughout the day. While some security guards carry paging devices, these paging devices tend to have limited service areas that restrict communications outside of a geographic area and limited functionality that restrict communications to a short text message such as a phone number. These paging devices also do not transmit communications and/or data back to the call center such as confirmations that a message affiliated with an incoming call was reviewed, location of the paging device (e.g., paging device of Mr. Johnson is located on 3rd floor/classroom 311), and so on. Still further, most people today tend to carry multiple communications devices, such as a pager, personal digital assistant (PDA), and cell phone. However, the school's call center typically does not leverage the multiple communications devices of a staff member (and/or of a student) because each of these communications devices is customized in terms of software, hardware, and network configuration. For example, the PDA and the cell phone have different software applications, data processing, storage, management, and communications systems.
To further complicate the dissemination instructions for communications, the call center must be able to effectively communicate risks by locating and accessing multiple communications devices utilized by the staff (and/or the students and/or other individuals on campus). For example, the call and/or associated data must be in a format that can easily be exchanged or otherwise shared with each communications device. For example, if the agent wants to share contact information (e.g., name, phone numbers, addresses, etc.) with a cell phone and a pager of a staff member, then the agent typically must enter this information twice—once on a platform communicating with the cell phone and once on a platform communicating with the pager. Another barrier is providing the communication and/or associated data in a standardized or otherwise compatible data format, depending on functionality limitations of the communications device, so that each communications device has efficient and effective access to the information. For example, conventional wireless phones have limited functionality compared with personal computers (PC). Typically, wireless telephones provide limited contact information, such as a telephone listing by name rather than full address books and/or calendars. Additionally, conventional wireless telephones are unable to run application/software packages and may have limited capabilities for transmitting, receiving, and displaying video data.
Accordingly, call centers for schools need integrated systems and methods that can track and identify communications (incoming, internal, and external communications), provide immediate access to resources (e.g., staff, students, guests, and emergency response personnel), and improve campus communications. The integrated systems and methods must support various communications infrastructures to capitalize on emerging communications devices such as, for example, interactive pagers, on-site pagers, wireless phones, personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc.